


hunger (please feed the starving)

by Harryissuchalittleshit



Series: To Be Loyal and Young and Just in the Aftermath of War [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Depression, F/M, Hannah is not okay, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, mentions of spouse and child abuse, starving child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:55:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22634686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harryissuchalittleshit/pseuds/Harryissuchalittleshit
Summary: Hannah Abbott is hungry, she's always hungry.It eats her whole and she can't escape.Depression runs in the family, but no one told her until it was too late.
Relationships: Hannah Abbott/Neville Longbottom
Series: To Be Loyal and Young and Just in the Aftermath of War [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628245
Kudos: 5





	hunger (please feed the starving)

**Author's Note:**

> Updated and edited! There is spouse and child abuse, just as a heads up.

Hannah’s never full.

The hunger eats at her, eats at her. She always wants more, more food, more knowledge, more protection. She’s grown up poor, she’s grown up with a mother who has a mouth that causes trouble and a father who begs to struggle.

She wants more. She wants Hogwarts to solve it all, to change everything. She wants to have a happy family, like the ones that Susan, and Ernie, and Justin have. Even if Susan has to run away, even if Ernie has to defy everything he knows, even if Justin is disowned.

They’re all disowned in this story.

Hannah goes to Hogwarts hungry. She’s hungry for food, for friends, for knowledge. She’s hungry for safety. Hogwarts is a castle, it protects its students, it feeds the hungry with food and knowledge.

Hannah is starving.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to know about the sadness.

She falls, but falling is nothing new.

~`~

Hannah always knew of magic, her father is magic, but her mother is not.

Her father owns a music shop just outside Diagon Alley. Her mother works at every diner, restaurant, and pub within walking distance to the shop. Or she works at all of them until she works at none of them, Hannah’s mother can’t hold her tongue when someone is rude.

Hannah grows up eating the bare minimum, scraps brought home to her late at night when her mother gets home. She grows up eating bits and pieces, leftovers and stale cold food.

She grows up hungry, with her stomach always hollow.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the hurt, the weeping, the fear.

She can’t make herself full.

~`~

The day her Hogwarts letter arrives, she hides it under her mattress. She only brings it out when Professor McGonagall comes out of their fire and asks her if she can help in anyway.

Hogwarts has always given scholarship to anyone who needs it. Hannah’s father is too proud to ask, her mother doesn’t care, Hannah asks for the money. She doesn’t have her father’s pride, too stubborn, too good for charity.

She doesn’t have her mother’s mouth, but she has her voice. Her father fell in love with her mother because of her voice, she knows all of the songs, all of the stories. He grew up with magic, he knew stories that couldn’t be true, but she could spin stories that made even his head spin.

Hannah loved the stories, she loved the songs, and she loved everything that her mother could give.

But she couldn’t give her magic, and so she was killed for it.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the pain.

She feels the pain harden her heart.

~`~

Hannah wasn’t the first to be pulled out of Hogwarts, but she wasn’t the last either. When her mother died, she was pulled out of school, pulled away from her friends, pulled away from her life.

She helped keep the shop afloat, she knew how to play every instrument in the shop, but grew up not being allowed to touch them. She loved music, she loved singing, but she would never do so in front of anyone.

Hannah came back to school the same time that Susan started to disappear. She started to cover for her friend, keeping her whereabouts secret. She started hiding food for Susan in her bed, started keeping things for herself in her book bag, just in case she didn’t get to eat again.

She had found the kitchens first, late one night, while locked out of the Hufflepuff common room, she had followed a House Elf back to the kitchens. They offered her any and every kind of tea she could want, any food that she could dream of. They offered her more food than she could eat, and she took everything that she could.

Hannah was hungry, she wanted more, and she wanted to eat.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the shaking.

She can barely hold herself upright on the best days.

~`~

No one wants to fight in a war.

Hannah watched as her friends disappeared and as they grew larger than life. Susan disappeared, she went into the shadows; she hid in back corners and listened as she always did. Ernie became loud, he stood up for those who couldn’t; he was a Lieutenant. Justin came to Hogwarts in a trunk that year, he showed up in every class until he couldn’t, he hid only because he had too.

Hannah followed behind Ernie and behind Justin, she never followed Susan. She couldn’t follow after her, Susan was always destined for more, for a war beyond the stone walls keeping them safe.

She fought with Dumbledore’s Army, kept a look out while Ernie, Justin, and Neville Longbottom rescued those in detention. She never had a loud voice, but she couldn’t stand behind the Carrows, she had to do something, say something.

Magic it turned out, was just like music. It kept her going, in the late nights when the four of them curled up on the Room of Requirement floor, she would sing, she would hum, and she would lull them to sleep with her voice.

It made the war a little easier, a little bit quieter, a little safer.

It didn’t bring back her mother.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see her grow smaller and small.

She can’t hear music anymore.

~`~

Hannah watched her friends fall, she followed behind Neville with screaming mandrakes and she kissed him in a quiet room long after it was all over. Hannah watched Ernie’s leg give out under him and Justin fall while his shoulder was shattered. She watched Susan disappear in the rain and once again years later.

Hannah left Hogwarts and bypassed her home for the Leaky Cauldron. She took a job as a barmaid and later took over everything. She married Neville and she had two babies, a set of twins named after their parents.

Both of his parents were still alive, but breathing and living were two different things. Hannah’s father was still living, her mother was six feet under.

Her parents weren’t perfect, they never were and she didn’t expect them to be. Neville’s parents never had the chance to fuck up.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see how she fucked up.

She cries for the things she can’t have anymore.

~`~

They don’t fight, but Hannah feels the distance between them when he leaves the Aurors. 

Hogwarts is so far away, and Hannah feels like she’s losing him to her first real home. She has a full refrigerator now, she has plenty of food for her and her family, but she’s still hungry. She misses Neville while he's gone at the school, even though he comes home most nights. The nights he’s gone, she pulls Ali and Frankie into her bed and doesn’t sleep.

She watched her parents fight and be unhappy her whole life. She watched her mother scream. She watched her father throw the first punch.

She throws the first punch.

Neville is sweet and kind and brave and good.

She hits him anyways. 

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the angry or the denial.

She feels it in every fist she makes.

~`~

Frankie follows her everywhere, he’s her shadow, always a step behind. He looks like Neville, and she falls over herself for him. She loves Ali, but Ali is her own double, small and shy and a singer.

Hannah loves them, she loves them and she sings them to sleep, and she kisses cuts and bruises and scrapes. She takes them to school, she makes them dinner every night, she dresses them and she hugs them and laughs at their bad jokes.

She hides Neville’s bruises and her own anger from them, she also hides the depression.

She hides her hunger too, the hollowness of her stomach, the years of being hungry and wanting more. She’s trapped in unhappiness of her own creation.

She takes the children to her father’s one night. He teaches Frankie the piano, he teaches Ali the violin, and he makes Hannah sing.

It’s a sad sound, something wounded, something cold, something missing.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the signs.

She is failing herself, she is failing them.

~`~

Hannah gets so many visitors, but none of them warm her. None of them are friendly faces anymore, none of them bring her comfort, not even her own friends.

Ernie and Justin went to St. Mungo’s they’re still fighting for others, still fighting for the world and those who need a voice. Ernie helps her bring her children into the world, helps her raise them from infants to toddlers to children. Justin is an uncle that she chooses, an uncle that she decided on.

Susan left their world not long after Neville left the Aurors.

She disappeared and Hannah never saw her again. Hannah always knew that Susan would disappear for good, and that she would slip away without anyone watching her. She didn’t expect that it would happen so soon.

Her children don’t notice Susan’s absence like Hannah does, and she starts to feel colder.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see ice that is forming in her heart.

She can’t make herself warm anymore, her fingers are frostbitten.

~`~

Her children don’t go hungry.

When their Hogwarts’ letters arrive, they have plenty of money for them to go to school without any trouble. Hannah almost doesn’t want them to leave.

Frankie and Ali don’t ever have to be hungry, don’t ever have to wonder where their next meal will come from. They don’t grow up poor, they don’t have to worry about anything.

Hannah can run a business, Neville teaches, their children are happy.

She closes the Leaky Cauldron for the day, locking up all the doors and grates, packing up all of their rooms. She sends one last letter to Neville and a first letter to Frankie and Ali. She’ll never see them again.

When she walks out of the pub, the sun has set and the sky has cleared. It’s starting to get cold and she takes in a deep breath. She’s gone before it had time to escape her lungs.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see the sadness take it’s hold.

She can’t find the light anymore.

~`~

The world would always be a dark and cold and hungry. Hannah let’s herself get hungry again. She lets herself get poor. She lets herself fall.

Hannah had been falling for years, she knew it the second she threw the first punch, sneered her first curse, and screamed her first insult. They didn’t happen in the war, they didn’t happen after, instead they simmered under the surface long before her letter arrived.

The first punch had been to a bully in her primary school.

The first curse had been to a boy who judged her mother.

The first insult had been to her father, over the breakfast table before she started any type of schooling.

All of them are learned habits.

Hannah never saw the slap across her face until the red mark appeared on her cheek. She never yelled at her father again, she never let him within arms-length without a witness around, she never tried to talk to him unless she needed too.

He tried to trap her after her mother died, and she walked out before the summer holidays.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one wants to see her last breath.

She’s hungry again.

~`~

When the bus hit her, she felt like singing, she felt full. She never felt the pain. She never let herself feel anything after that.

She saw her mother first, saw her whole and happy and warm. She had no need to fight anymore, no need to scream, no need to live in fear. The same marks that Hannah put on Neville, were scars on her mother. They were long faded marks, but Hannah still felt like a monster.

Maybe if she was never born, maybe if her mother never got trapped, maybe if she didn’t grow up hungry. Hannah never was one for maybe’s, never one to imagine her life without her.

She used to imagine food, piles and piles of food, of meats from the butchers and bread from the bakery they could never afford fresh and piles of vegetables that she never got to eat, accept out of a can. She never got to have anything until she went to Hogwarts.

Her children would get to have everything.

~`~

Depression runs in the family, but no one told her until it was too late.

Hannah finally felt full.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


End file.
